Dead Man’s Switch

by Tammy Kaehler

  I clamped down on my fear and anger and remained calm. “I belong here every bit as much as anyone else.” I tried a diversion. “By the way, Jim, what kind of rental car do you have this weekend?”

  That stopped him flat. “What? Why?”

  “I’ve…got a bet with someone that more people get silver Tauruses than anything else.”

  “You’re wrong again. Blue Dodge.” He switched the fury back on. “It proves my point: you don’t belong here.”

  “I’m not leaving.” I locked my knees against their trembling.

  He snarled again. “Just stay out of my way, and keep your nose out of my business.” With a final shake of his fist in my face, he thundered off.

  I braced myself on the front of our motorhome. Outstanding.

  A quiet voice spoke beside me. “Are you all right, Miss Kate?”

  I turned to see Alex Hanley, the diminutive brake specialist. “I think so. I wish I knew how I made him so upset. What he thinks I did.” My heart was still pounding.

  He wiped his hands with the red shop rag he was holding. “Well, I betcha’ it’s not something you did. That Jim is an odd duck.”

  “You know him?”

  “Worked with him a couple years on a team a while back. Even then he had his moods. Like a spoiled three-year-old? Throwing a fit when he doesn’t get what he wants. Kind of like that.”

  He patted my shoulder. “You watch yourself with him, now.” He gestured to the paddock. “We’ll keep an eye on you too, but you just watch yourself.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  I looked for Detective Jolley halfheartedly as I hurried to Holly’s team paddock, but didn’t see him.

  Holly was sitting in a chair under the awning, sipping a soda and fanning herself with a folded piece of paper. Her contentment became indignation as I related my encounter with Jim Siddons.

  “How dare he?” She sat bolt upright and banged her Diet Coke on the table next to her with a splash. “I’ll have a word with that misguided boy.”

  “Please. Just skip it.”

  “He needs some facts explained—and an attitude adjustment.”

  “What’s he going to do? Run me off the road? He’s not short-sighted enough to damage hundreds of thousands of dollars of machinery, just because he’s pissed at me.” Then I recalled how he’d brushed my car during practice.

  Holly raised an eyebrow. “No?”

  “No, I still can’t believe he’d risk damaging his car and others to get back at me. For what?”

  “You stole his ride, remember?”

  I threw up my hands and shouted, “I didn’t steal anything. It obviously wasn’t his to begin with!”

  “He’s confused.”

  “He’s like a child throwing a tantrum because he didn’t get what he wanted. Except…the look in his eyes was creepy.”

  “Children don’t always know right from wrong—they only know what they want.”

  “Too damn bad for him.”

  “You hold onto that attitude. But also watch your back.” She wagged a finger at me.

  “Everyone keeps saying that. If Jim’s really driving a blue car, he couldn’t have killed Wade.”

  “If he drove it here, if he didn’t leave later, if he didn’t come in another way. You can’t be sure.”

  “You really think he’d do something?”

  “Sugar, what part of ‘there was a murder here two nights ago’ don’t you understand?”

  “I found the body, remember?”

  “What don’t you get about the idea that someone here did it?”

  “But…not Jim.”

  “Because you know him? Because he’s a driver?”

  I didn’t have a response for her, and she swept on. “It’s going to be someone we’ve met. Someone we know. Maybe someone we like. I asked Detective Jolley, and he said Wade didn’t have much outside of racing.”

  “He told me that, too.”

  “There you go, it’s someone here. Though probably not Marco in his Ferrari.”

  “You knew it was Marco?”

  “Every race, Kate: a Ferrari and a groupie. I hear he likes to parade around naked to dry off after a stint in the car—with a female fan in the trailer.”

  “Thanks for that visual.” I rubbed my temples. “I get that we’re not looking for a stranger. I just don’t want to face it.”

  “Work on that. And tell the detective about Jim’s latest threats—tell Jack, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She smirked at me. “That’s better.”

  I pulled Wade’s notebook out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Look at this.”

  She opened it, and I thought about what she was seeing. Precise, cramped writing. Dates heading six columns of numbers, check marks, and letters.

  “What the hell?” Holly read one line aloud, “DH, 2:13:63, 8, HT, check mark, 9-26-09.”

  “The dates that break up the columns look like ALMS race dates.” I pointed to one as she turned the page.

  “I think you’re right. Under that you’ve got columns…the first is letters—initials maybe. The second looks like lap times. When was Sebring in 2009?”

  “March 21.”

  “This list is Sebring. You were driving with Mike and Wade that race. What was your fastest lap time?”

  I thought back. “I was barely slower than Wade who was just slower than Mike. I did a 1:40:50, I think.”

  Holly looked at me with wide eyes. “That’s here, Kate. He was tracking fastest lap times—that means this first column is driver initials. See, here are yours with that time.”

  I scooted my chair next to hers and looked where she indicated. Sure enough, the first two columns of initials showed “WB 1:40:30,” “MM 1:39:50,” and “KR 1:40:50.”

  Holly ran her finger down the list for that race, and we identified initials for other drivers, including Lars and Seth, the drivers of the 29 Corvette, and Jim Siddons, who’d been their third driver for that race.

  I stopped her as she reached the bottom of the list of drivers. “That’s not all drivers in the race.”

  “He only tracked some of them?”

  “Also, there’s Jim Siddons twice—but the second instance has no lap time.” “JS” was one of four sets of initials at the bottom of the list with no times.

  “I can find the entry list for Sebring 2009 somewhere, and we could figure out the others.”

  I was remembering the race. “There was a Brian someone—that’s the BS? Pablo Trujillo was a third driver for one of the prototypes, so that’s PT. But I don’t know who the WB was, besides Wade. Or why they have no lap times.”

  “We know the first two columns anyway. Here’s your whole line, Kate,” Holly read, “KR, 1:40:50, 4, TF, then blank and blank.”

  “The third column, that’s how we finished. See, me, Mike, and Wade were all fourth. Lars, Seth, and Jim were sixth.”

  The next five minutes brought us no closer to solutions. Holly sighed. “It gets hard. Who are HT, RJ, AT, and TF in the fourth column?”

  “And why do some entries have check marks and dates—that’s got to be the column, some kind of date. But why do some have another person’s initials, checks, and dates, but not all of them? Oh—and Holly, flip to the back of the book, there are a couple pages there.”

  She found the page of initials and notes first and read them aloud. “MO, crossed out, with the words ‘wife plus girlfriends plus children.’ Well, that’s Marco, everyone knows about that.”

  “Marco said he wouldn’t pay Wade. Think this is Wade’s blackmail list?”

  “Could be. The way this is crossed out looks angry.” She held it up to the light. “He almost poked a hole in the page. Next, PT and MT on one line, also cross
ed out.”

  “Paul Trimble and Wade trying to control Marcus, I bet. Which didn’t work the way he wanted.”

  “Then we’ve got EMA—got to be Eddie—with ‘Suz’ and ‘Crystal.’”

  “Eddie and Susanah Purley? I’d heard she had more affairs than just Wade. And Crystal must be another one.”

  “Never heard of a Crystal here. But the next line confirms Eddie and Susanah: SP with EMA and TU. Torsten Uhlgren?”

  “I guess so.”

  “People make interesting choices.” She shook her head and continued. “TA with question marks. Guess he couldn’t come up with anything on Tom. That’ll be easy for you to check. And finally, JS and TM with the words ‘scam’ and ‘my choices too.’”

  “Jack Sandham, Jim Siddons? Scam?”

  “I surely don’t know a TM.”

  “Wade wasn’t much of a blackmailer yet, if he only had Eddie, Susanah, and JS/TM on his active list.”

  “A blackmail starter kit?”

  “Detective Jolley said blackmail victims were suspects because they benefited from Wade’s death. I just can’t believe Susanah Purley did it. Or Jim, because of the blue rental car.”

  “Maybe Eddie or the mysterious TM?”

  “Flip back a page, Holly, there’s more.” I leaned over and we studied the list together. Unlike the other pages, I didn’t think the initials in the column on the left were people.

  SJTsjtadmin/yK39juP5

  TRGbuddy47/leave12

  BRbradmin/don’tchangeme

  RSI32netRSI/pat19johnk

  WRadmin/western2001

  TWEtweadmin2/us99richmond

  SSRjsesboss/7uj8ik9ol

  DRWdrwadmin/31flavicecream

  ESesespania/fromSeville

  CRadmincr/zjY741tj

  NNRteamNNR/niner93UK

  RRRtripleR42/notAbrand42

  Holly confirmed my suspicions. “Looks like teams with usernames and passwords, don’t they? That ‘WR’ could be my Western Racing.”

  “And SSR, that’s Sandham Swift. But what are the logins for?”

  “I know each team has its own radio frequencies, more or less. And I know we do our own….”

  “What?”

  “Hang on, Kate, let me check something.” She crossed the garage and ducked into the team’s transport trailer.

  She reappeared a minute later, fuming. “Our IT guy says that’s Western Racing’s login information for our wireless network, which is how we receive car data when it’s on the track and transmit it between team engineers in the paddock, pits, and wherever. Seriously? A username of ‘admin’ and our team name and year founded as the password? A monkey could guess that! He’s changing it now.”

  “There’s something else. Aren’t all the teams who’ve had cornering or spinning problems on this list?”

  She studied it again, tapping her finger against various rows. “You might be on to something. I think this list is Delray customers.”

  We digested that idea.

  “Holly, what was Wade doing with this? Listening to team info? This is scary stuff to have.”

  “You could gather a lot of information about a whole lot of cars if you used this. But I’d never have pegged Wade as a computer or data whiz.”

  “It sure connects him to the car problems. Was he cheating? Sabotaging others? Or was this just for blackmail?” I looked at Holly in shock. “Did I say ‘just for blackmail’? How has the racing world come to this? Maybe Zeke’s right, maybe the noble sportsman is only a fairy tale.”

  “Being involved in racing doesn’t make anyone a better person, Kate. We get all types here, too.”

  “Logically, I know that.”

  We puzzled over the list another minute, then returned to the race data at the front of the book. We brainstormed, but generated no solutions. Holly was starting to crack jokes—“These are nicknames, Kate! You’re Too Fast Reilly, and Pablo was Rotten Job Trujillo”—when my cell phone rang with Jolley on the other end.

  “Detective!” I heard the guilt in my voice. “I was looking for you. I found that notebook.”

  “I’m on my way back in the direction of the track—when did you find it?”

  “I remembered where it was a couple hours ago, but I was in the middle of something, and…it took me some time to get ahold of it.”

  He sighed. “I’m almost to the track. Where are you? I’ll meet you there.”

  “I’ll meet you at the entrance.”

  “Fine. Five minutes.” He clicked off.

  Holly raised an eyebrow at me. “Trouble?”

  “I should have called him the minute I found this. Oops. Thanks for the help.”

  “It was kind of fun. But next time, I’ll hunt up my secret decoder ring. We could use it.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Jolley made no secret of his annoyance. I explained where I’d first found the notebook the day before, what I’d done with it, and what Holly and I had figured out about its contents.

  That’s when he scowled. “I asked you to turn this over to me as soon as possible. You withheld potentially valuable evidence in the murder of Wade Becker.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I understand, but in addition to not giving us all the facts, you may have put yourself in danger. How many people knew you had this today?”

  “I was careful. I kept it hidden.”

  “But some people knew. And now more people know. Just be careful.”

  I didn’t mention the photocopies. “Detective?”

  “Yes?” I heard “now what” in his tone.

  “Other things have come up.” I told him about the video Zeke was tracking down, and he immediately radioed to get someone official involved in the search. I also related my run-in with Jim Siddons and Holly’s assessment of Jim’s capabilities.

  “We’re looking at him, as well as others. But he obviously doesn’t like you. I agree with your friend: he may not have much impulse control. Again, be careful.”

  I was more worried now than before.

  “Where will you be tonight, Kate?”

  “I’m going back to the Inn now for some downtime, then I’ve got another team dinner, at The Boathouse. Early to sleep to prepare for tomorrow.”

  “You’re here when tomorrow?”

  “8:00. The race isn’t until 3:00, but it’s a full day.”

  “I’ll see you sometime tomorrow. Thanks for the notebook, and call me immediately if there’s anything else I should know.”

  We drove off in opposite directions: him into the track, and me to the Inn.

  Once in my room, I pulled the curtains closed against the remaining sunlight, changed into sweats, and dropped face-down on the bed. The noise of my next door neighbor going into his room fifty minutes later woke me up. I’d hoped to sleep longer, but I already felt more rested. I stretched and yawned, feeling a spurt of irritation when I caught sight of the box from my father. I got up and took another shower.

  By the time I’d cleaned up and changed into dinner attire—more black pants and a white, long-sleeve, button-down team shirt—I’d become resigned. I marched over to the box, moved it to the bed, and sat down next to it. I took a deep breath, surprised that my heart was thumping. Under the lid and a dozen layers of tissue paper was a silver, five-by-seven frame holding an old photo of a man and a baby.

  I blinked. Looked closer. It was me as a newborn. I’d seen plenty of photos of my grandmother in the same hospital room, with baby Kate wrapped in the same baby blanket. But the man. It wasn’t my father. It had to be my grandfather, my father’s father who had just passed away. I was stunned.

  What I’d been told—and had accepted as fact—was that my parents were young when they marr
ied without their parents’ consent. Both had been students at Boston University, my mother there on an academic scholarship, my father a third-generation BU legacy from old Massachusetts money. I’d come along five months into the hasty and ill-conceived marriage—my grandmother’s description—and my mother had died in the hospital just days after giving birth to me. At that point, I understood, my father and his family had abandoned me. My mother’s parents—Grandmother and Gramps—had raised me in New Mexico. Grandmother told me many times that my father and his parents had never had the “decency or respect” to visit me or my mother.

  But I was holding proof the opposite was true—at least of my paternal grandfather. Had she not known? Not told me? Grandmother and I were going to have a talk soon, I thought, as I replaced the photo in its tissue nest.

  It was six o’clock. I wanted to be out of the room and not thinking about my family problems. I gathered up the photocopied pages of Wade’s notebook. The pages of login information and miscellaneous notes—blackmail efforts?—I left behind, face down in the top drawer of the desk. I didn’t want those anywhere near me. The pages listing race dates and records I carried to the hotel porch.

  Fifteen minutes after I’d set myself up with mineral water and a dish of pretzels from the bar, and five minutes after I’d given up staring at the notebook pages hoping for inspiration to strike, Mike ambled up the walk.

  “Hello, stranger.” I saluted him with my glass.

  “Hello yourself, partner.” He climbed the stairs and sat in the chair next to the loveseat I was occupying. He dropped the day’s paper on the table in front of us and scooped up a handful of pretzels.

  “Help yourself.”

  “Fanks.” He spoke through a mouthful.

  “What have you been doing all day? I didn’t see you at the track.”

  He brushed salt from his hands. “Worked out, golfed, napped. A little R&R.”

  “Sounds nice. I wanted to ask you something. When you said that Wade wasn’t the only one who had an affair with Mrs. Purley…who else did?”